5 Email Tracking Tools to Monitor Your Open Rates

Email open rate is no longer the reliable metric it used to be.

However, you may still want to track it.

And while there are several ways to track your open rate…

The most scalable approach is to use an email marketing or sales tool that tracks everything automatically.

Here are five tools that track opens and other metrics for every email you send.

Are Open Rates Accurate? 🤷🏻‍♂️

Before we get to the tools, let’s address some concerns about open rates.

Recent changes made by large email providers have made open rate tracking harder.

These changes mess with the tracking mechanisms present in professional emails. Here are three scenarios in which open rate data can get skewed:

• ➡️ Apple Mail’s Privacy Protection preloads every email before the user actually opens it. The tracking pixel gets preloaded, too, potentially resulting in a false open if the recipient has Privacy Protection enabled.
• ➡️ The tracking pixel cannot be loaded if recipients don’t allow images in their incoming emails. In that case, even if the recipient opens the email, it will not be registered as an open.
• ➡️ Many email service providers clip large emails, which may prevent the tracking pixel from loading. The exact size limit varies but is often around 100KB.

Time to ditch open rates? Probably.

Let’s keep them as a side metric, but put more faith in other success metrics like reply rate, conversion rate, etc.

Email Open Tracking Tools ⚒️

Most email marketing tools track opens automatically. There is no need for a separate email tracker, which only complicates your workflow.

Typically, email marketing tools provide a dashboard with all of the essential stats, such as:

• ➡️ Number of emails sent
• ➡️ Open rate
• ➡️ Click through rate

Additional stats vary depending on the tool.

💡Whatever tool you use to track opens, make sure to only send to verified emails. For a quick email check, use our email checker below. ⬇️

lemlist

lemlist is a multichannel outreach tool specialized in personalizing your messages.

You can reach out to your prospects through:

• ➡️ Cold emailing
• ➡️ Cold calling
• ➡️ LinkedIn messaging

All in the same campaign (!) if you so wish.

lemlist also brings you an extensive lead database of more than 450 million leads and a free subscription to lemwarm with the Email Pro plan or above.

Needless to say, it also tracks your open rates:

lemlist’s paid plans start at $32/month.

Snov.io

Snov.io is a sales engagement platform that offers:

• ➡️ Multichannel outreach
• ➡️ Email warm-up
• ➡️ Lead search and contact info verification 

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Snov.io, of course, also tracks your opens.

If the tracking pixel fails to load, but the recipient clicks a link, it will still be recorded as an open.

Snov.io’s paid plans start at $30/month.

Mailshake

Mailshake is an easy-to-use sales outreach tool.

You can use Mailshake for cold emailing, cold calling, and LinkedIn messaging.

As with the other tools, Mailshake’s open tracking is integrated into its Campaigns feature.

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Mailshake doesn’t offer a free plan or trial. Its paid plans start at $25/month.

Mailchimp

If you’re not doing outreach, but rather use email for newsletters or ecommerce mailings…

Then Mailchimp could be a good choice.

Mailchimp offers advanced segmentation and reporting.

One of its best reporting features is that you can filter out Apple Mail users from your metrics, thereby improving the accuracy of your open rates.

Mailchimp charges $10/month for the first 12 months and $20/month thereafter for 500 contacts.

Mixmax

Mixmax is a multichannel outreach tool and meeting scheduler.

One of its standout features is its seamless Salesforce integration. 

Mixmax also has advanced open tracking. It tracks multiple opens, including the location and device used, giving you a better understanding of recipient behavior.

To top it off, Mixmax provides real-time notifications as soon as a recipient opens your email.

Pricing: Mixmax offers a free plan, but you can’t send any campaigns with it. Its paid plans start at $29/month.

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Alternative ways for tracking email opens 

Using email marketing software isn’t the only way to track opens.

The most elementary way to track opens is by sending a read receipt request with your email.

However, some people consider them rude, and they are not scalable. Read receipt requests are primarily suitable for tracking opens on an important email here and there.

A little more scalable are email tracking Chrome extensions.

Working straight from the browser and Gmail (typically), they’re a good option if your sending volume is low.

Which brings us back to the start of the article: A professional email marketing tool like the ones above is essential for scalable open tracking.